Monday, February 06, 2012

2012 ZiPS Projections - Miami Marlins

The Marlins, thanks to Loria actually investing some money back into the team (though partially by virture of taxpayer subsidization, an issue we won't touch here), are a serious threat in the NL Wild Card race and their chances of winning the division, while on the long side, are legitimate - the Phillies don't have an unassailable roster and there are some downside scenarios that give real openings to the rest of the East.

What puts the Marlins a little behind the Braves is that while they have a really solid roster, there's also a certain lack of depth that can make back luck hit the team a little harder. The Braves have enough arms at AAA to cobble together a better-than-replacement level rotation if they lost all their major leaguers, while the Marlins don't. As a whole, the Marlins don't have a lot of major league-ready talent that can fill-in here or there and while there are lower-level prospects with upside, the trade value thins out quickly after Christian Yelich. Still a solid team, however, but it won't be a walk to the playoffs by any stretch.

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This sounds nuts, but I think Mike Stanton will be the next player to crack the 60HR threshold, and I wouldn't be shocked if he does it in the next few years. Something about him screams "McGwire in his prime" to me. Of course, this all depends on how the Marlins park plays.

Do you guys think that the Marlins would have been better with Pujols rather than Reyes? I guess it probably depends on Reyes health and if Pujols is robotic or just really good.

I don't think there is any doubt they would have been. Reyes feels like an awfully big risk given his injury history and the way those injuries run the very real risk of robbing him of his primary asset moving forward.

I'm not so sure. Pujols is probably worth about 30 runs more per season than Reyes on offense, although obviously Reyes has the worse track record when it comes to health. I don't know how bad Gaby Sanchez would be at 3B, but it wouldn't surprise me if the defensive alignment they have now (Sanchez at 1B, Infante at 2B, Reyes at SS and Hanley at 3B) is 20 runs better than the alignment they'd have with Pujols at 1B, Infante at 2B, Hanley at SS and Sanchez at 3B. So are you better off being 10 runs worse overall (30 runs worse offensively and 20 runs better defensively) with the money that you saved by spending on Reyes instead of Pujols?

Do you guys think that the Marlins would have been better with Pujols rather than Reyes?

Seems obvious that they would be, simply because Pujols is the greater player. Any team-specific concerns can usually be addressed by trade (if you think Sanchez would not be able to handle 3B, then trade him for someone who could).

Bruno: never put up a 141 OPS+, 130 (at age 21) was his peak, Bruno also hit .332/.430/.633 in AAA (PCL) at age 20.
Awhile back a Twin fan mentioned that Bruno had always been an underachieving flameout, I replied that to me that was odd, Bruno had always seemed to be an overachiever who simply persevered and produced despite a seeming lack of raw talent... looking at BBREF I think the Twinkies fan's take is more right.

I really hope that Stanton does not take the Bruno career path, pluses are that he's not that similar IMHO, he's better- more raw power for one thing, he also Ks a lot more, as a hitter he's more like a Dave Kingman who walks more (Kingman was a better hitter than Brunansky BTW, 3 years OPS+ over Bruno's top, a 9 point career advantage, a Kingman who both walks and is not a roving defensive catastrophe would be a good player, better than Bruno anyway)

Tony C.? I can see that, of course Tony C has limited value as a projection data point.

Even so, the Reyes contract is a bad one. He had a BABIP adjusted 3.9 WAR 2011 season, and was worth that, total, for 2009 and 2010. He's close to the point where he shouldn't be playing SS any more.

What of Reyes' 06-08 stretch? He averaged 6 WAR. It's reasonable to say that Reyes lost '09 (injury) and down '10 (not fully recovered) are not representative of his performance when right. Moreover, Reyes is only 28 this coming season. I don't think Reyes is a great bet on the back half of this deal, but I think he'll deliver in the near-term.

I meant I dunno if ZiPS and I have both viewed such a player as good which, naturally, only covers what I assume the rest of you refer to as the Walt-ZiPS era.

Of course that may be because I never like ultra-high K players. :-)

And Schmidt and Jackson didn't K at anything like these rates. Other than Rob Deer, Swish Nicholson and maybe a couple of others, nobody K'd at these sorts of rates until the last 20 years or so. Reggie is the only HoFer with a K-rate worse than 1 per 4 AB. McGwire would have joined him, Thome will and Sosa probably won't. Edmonds is also a serious HoF contender. Thome has a slightly worse K-rate than Stanton's career projection. ZiPS probably liked Thome at 22 (big age-21 year at AA-AAA followed by huge AAA and ML year at 22).

If you look at guys with at least 1 K per 3.5 AB through age 22 (min 500 PA) you get a list of often good but not often great players -- well, mostly too soon to tell.

Of course to even get a shot in the majors at that age with that K-rate you have to crush the ball when you hit it so it's generally a quite talented bunch. Now, 2 HoFers (counting Sosa) out of 14 ain't bad odds.

Mike Stanton's career line: HOF? Seems like it to me assuming that VG defense ages normally

See last year's Jason Heyward discussion. Close call -- 10,000 PA, low 130s OPS+ is about the historical borderline for a corner OF. 500+ HR and 1500+ RBI should put him on the right side of that border.

For example, McGriff has just over 10,000 PA and a 134 OPS+ and not getting much attention but Billy Williams at 133 is in. Al Simmons and Zack Wheat (VC) are in while Dwight Evans and presumably Bobby Abreu are out. Sosa is also in this group. (Reggie was 139 in nearly 11,500 PA so he's 1-2 steps above that Stanton projection.) The Evans and Abreu situations suggest the defense might not matter much.

Note, many folks in the "roughly 10,000 PA and 130ish OPS+" are the 3000 hit/high BA guys (Carew, Gwynn, Clemente, Waner) so not good comps for Stanton, Simmons and Wheat had nearly 3000 hits too. Mainly the conclusion you draw from that list is that McGriff is getting screwed.

Fair point on Schmidt. From that perspective the difference between Schmidt and Stanton is PA. I screwed up a bit as Stanton of course is entering his age 22 season, not leaving it. Schmidt did K a ton at 23 but he was 1 per 4 AB at 24 ... then K'd a ton at 25 as you note then back to about 1 per 4. That's a fair amount of variation in K-rate so I'm reluctant to guesstimate what Schmidt's "true" K-rate was. Stanton's already got 1000 ML PA and the K-rate has been consistently high so I've got a bit more confidence where his true rate is at the moment. Obviously he might lower the K-rate over the next couple of years -- if so, he's a true monster.

But given he's already got those 1000 PA and will likely have 1600 by the time Schmidt had 40, it's reasonable to think he's got a decent shot at being a better hitter than Schmidt. He certainly projects better -- Schmidt was quite awful in his half-season at AA at 21.

I'm actually sort of surprised Stanton doesn't project to a higher career OPS+. He had a 141 last year and is projected to 140 this year which I assume would peak a little bit around 27 (say 150) and stay there through his early 30s then decline. I guess I'd have thought ZiPS would project him to about 12-14 years of 140+ meaning it would take a pretty ugly 6-8 years after that to get the average down to 133.

By the way, if I do that list properly (500+ PA, at least 1 K per 3.5 AB, ages 20-21) the list is just Stanton, J Upton and Canseco. High-K young guys just aren't going to break through very often. The raw Stanton/Upton numbers are quite close but Stanton has him by 12 OPS+ points.

MS 997 PA, 261/344/525, 132 OPS+
JU 1005 PA, 280/361/505, 120 OPS+

Drop it to 400 PA and you pick up Strawberry, a quite close comp (except for the whole handedness thing).

Walt you have two competing concepts on k-rate that have to dealt with:

1) Concept 1 are the direct effects of k-rate itself. On this your comparisons are sound, a 1-in-3 k-rate is a 1-in-3 k-rate regardless.
2) What that k-rate says about the player's underlying abilities. For this the k-rates of guys like Stanton need to be put in context, and in context Schmidt struck out a ton more than Stanton. Not a lot of guys have succeeded with Stanton's k-rate, but until the 1960s nobody had those kind of k-rates including pitchers.

I'm convinced that there are positive aspects of hitting associated with higher strikeout rates that go beyond mere selection bias, particularly since there appears to be negative aspects of low strikeout rates that shouldn't be affected much by selection bias. If Mike Stanton strikes out a lot, it could be because he's a terrible hitter. But it's pretty clear he's not a terrible hitter. So he probably strikes out a lot due to a combination of several things, most of which are designed to result in hitting the ball as hard as possible when he does hit it.

The negative aspects for the future with high k-rates are known: BABIP regresses much more severely than k-rate, so Stanton's predicted future batting average does drop. But I also believe that predicted future home run rates go up a decent amount, and predicted future BABIP probably goes up very slightly too. Furthermore k-rate does regress some, and does improve as a player ages and so a player with Stanton's k-rate has greater room for improvement there.

I think the end result is that the downside of all of those strikeouts (low future AVG) is mitigated to a large extent (but not entirely) by the positive indicators in other areas.

When I first started doing projections back in the late 90s, I found that not accounting for the positive aspects of high strikeout totals led to less accurate projections and caused me to miss more than I should have on players like Darrin Fletcher and Bobby Abreu.

See last year's Jason Heyward discussion. Close call -- 10,000 PA, low 130s OPS+ is about the historical borderline for a corner OF. 500+ HR and 1500+ RBI should put him on the right side of that border.

For example, McGriff has just over 10,000 PA and a 134 OPS+ and not getting much attention but Billy Williams at 133 is in. Al Simmons and Zack Wheat (VC) are in while Dwight Evans and presumably Bobby Abreu are out. Sosa is also in this group. (Reggie was 139 in nearly 11,500 PA so he's 1-2 steps above that Stanton projection.) The Evans and Abreu situations suggest the defense might not matter much.

Note, many folks in the "roughly 10,000 PA and 130ish OPS+" are the 3000 hit/high BA guys (Carew, Gwynn, Clemente, Waner) so not good comps for Stanton, Simmons and Wheat had nearly 3000 hits too. Mainly the conclusion you draw from that list is that McGriff is getting screwed.

I think it's the milestone (500+ HR) that really tilts the scales in Stanton's favor, plus the high RBIs and nearly 2400 hits help as well. I don't disagree that defense probably won't be properly valued in Stanton or other corner outfielders cases but where I think it helps him more is that he has the milestones to point to, Abreu and Evans are/will be viewed by many voters as good defenders who didn't do anything special offensively to merit induction. Stanton on the other hand would get highlighted as being a big slugger who was far more than just a bat.

Reyes is projected for 608 career steals. I have to assume that makes him the leader in these ZiPS projections.

My immediate assumption was that Crawford would be higher but his bad year must have killed his career projection, he's 30 behind Reyes. If the site archives worked correctly (I can't seem to go back further than 2 pages in TO archives and a google search for last year's projections turned up the comments without the projections) I would check to see for sure but I assume he would have been higher than 608 pre-2011. After that I was ready to concede your point until I suddenly had a thought. That was proven correct because I give you your ZiPS career projection SB leader with 609: Juan Pierre!

If the Marlins are smart Reyes's SB days are pretty much behind him. Sure, use his talents to go 15SB-3CS, but for a chronically injured player with leg problems to be aiming for 40-10 makes very, very little sense.

Sweet. I know him and his family. Great guy and it was a shame he didn't have more success in the majors.

I am not nearly sabremetric enough to hold my own in a discussion with you fellas. But when I saw Stanton play last year, he reminded me of a right handed Reggie Jackson: tremendous power, lots of whifs and a very atheletic frame.

But when I came here I realized how incredibly young Stanton is. If his age curve is typical, he won't hit his peak for another 4 or 5 years. While he may or may not turn into the next Reggie Jackson, I am eager to watch him grow. I would love it if Stanton has the kind or 3rd season that Reggie enjoyed: 47 HR, .275/.410/.608, 334 total bases

If Stanton does match those numbers, though, I hope it isn't his career peak. Reggie never got close to those numbers again in his long, illustrious career.

2) What that k-rate says about the player's underlying abilities. For this the k-rates of guys like Stanton need to be put in context, and in context Schmidt struck out a ton more than Stanton.

And here we disagree. K-rate is K-rate. It kills BA and therefore puts an upper limit on how good a guy can be. If Stanton at age 30 is hitting 230 then he maxes out at something like 230/350/530 -- still a damn good hitter but impossible for him to be better than that. I'm guessing this is the future that ZiPS sees.

Jim Thome is the guy who, to an extent, broke the mold. But he did so by being the 2nd greatest on-contact hitter in baseball history (to Ruth). Clearly Thome won't be unique and, of course, nobody needs to be as good as Jim Thome to be an excellent player.

And there aren't positive aspects to strikeouts (other than avoiding DPs). There are, of course, positive aspects to sacrificing contact in exchange for hitting the ball as hard as you can especially if you have a good enough eye to walk a lot and you hit the ball in the air. This is the story of baseball over the last 20 years or so.

Stanton's on-contact BA/SLG are currently 390/780. That's not likely to be sustainable but it's also not hard to see him as, say, 380/760 for some years which isn't going to make a big difference. Point being that, with that K-rate, Stanton is already performing at about the highest possible sustainable level already. There is not a lot of room for growth unless he drops the K-rate. There is a good bit of room to fall and still be a very good player even with that K-rate.

What sets Stanton above some of his fellow young, high-K recent counterparts are (a) massive power -- for these ages, you can only argue that maybe Mathews and Pujols have been more impressive (a fair number have been his equal); (b) high walk rate -- not unique but high power and walks at this young age are a very promising combo; (c) apparently outstanding defense. Stanton does not look like a hitter who will get eaten alive by the Ks (as opposed to, say, Wily Mo Pena who started it all :-) and, with his defense, even if he were to decline to something like a 115 OPS+, he's gonna still be above-average. His absolute downside is something like Rob Deer or Mike Cameron which is not too shabby for an absolute downside.

The drawback is that BA. Among 152 players with 500+ PA at age 21, he's #114 in BA. So, despite the very good walk rate, he's only 48th in OBP. He's not going to be able to improve on that without dropping the K-rate (or becoming the greatest on-contact hitter blah blah blah). At 21, he had a lower OBP than Adrian Beltre. Of recent vintage, he's behind Pujols, Griffey, AROD, Heyward (20-21), J Upton and Cabrera, tied with Castro (20-21) but ahead of Andruw and Sheffield. Of those guys, Upton and Andruw are the best comps for the type of hitter Stanton is right now -- which is nothing to sneeze at but they're clearly 2nd tier in that bunch.

None of which means that K-rate is destiny. Stanton might improve his K-rate as he matures and, if he can do so without sacrificing much power, then he might move into Miguel Cabrera territory (hard to see him ever hitting 330).

Anyway, I'd love for Dan to post his full career projection. It does seem to me that ZiPS can't be seeing much growth from his current point or ZiPS must be seeing a fairly dramatic (but long-lasting?) decline. But maybe I'm wrong on that.

Anyway, I'd love for Dan to post his full career projection. It does seem to me that ZiPS can't be seeing much growth from his current point or ZiPS must be seeing a fairly dramatic (but long-lasting?) decline. But maybe I'm wrong on that.

That's pretty much it. ZiPS has his BA peaking in the mid-.270s and only adding a few more homers a year at his best and generally in the high 140s until 31/32 when he starts to drop off steadily.

When Reggie Jackson was 22 he had his career high in strikeouts with 171, which was then second all-time. The following year he hit 37 home runs before the All-Star break, and went on to prove that you can have a Hall of Fame career despite peaking at age 23.